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This is wrong. Actually, the LRF was only sanctioned in 2000, when inflation was already at 5.97% yearly.

The main factor behind reducing the inflation was not the URV hack, but the government's fulfilled commitment to markets to keep inflation low at all costs: through skyrocketing interest rates [around 25%], for instance (thus reducing credit -> reducing consumption -> reducing prices); or by binding it to the US Dollar and bankrupting many national industries.

Where I live (Brazil) there has been widespread debate about state funding of political parties. It happens at the moment (I think something like 400mi USD is invested in it), but the issue with it is that it has prompted a load of small, socially inexpressive political parties to be founded to get money from that fund.

Debate also spins around prohibition of donations from companies or from donations over 2000 reais or something by a person (around 950 USD). Some would argue that company interests are valid and that prohibiting that would just generate that sort of funding illegally; others would say this sort of company funding is the root of a very corrupt system. This should be one of the main points of a try at political reform in the next four years.

Not necessarily is "being a parliament" a problem -- after all, parties are together for a reason. Except they are usually ideological in most countries (liberals, social-democrats, socialists), and not a group of people that got into parties to get, as noted by the article, in the party most convenient for the district where you come from.

I changed my original comment to "public universal healthcare". I once again apologize for the lack of clarity of the original comment, and I hope you understand what my point was.

My notion of "public healthcare" is being able to walk into a government clinic or hospital and get free treatment or appointments as long as you show you're a citizen -- sorry for not having cleared that up.

I wouldn't say the US being rich is a question of government organization, rather of not having been a colony whose sole purpose was to export raw materials.

Higher dimensions also means more tax collection, which could be perfectly invested into making the standard of living of Americans better (it seems absurd to me that you don't have any public universal healthcare). The government prefers to invest 50% of it in Defense though. Consequence (also) of arms industry lobbyists and geopolitical strategy etc. but certainly not of size.

Brazil is a country where the correctional systems runs with 200.000 people over capacity and has had a 100-page UN report condemning practices which deny basic human rights, yet prison riots are treated by media simply as gang plots with no particular reason; Captain Nascimento, the protagonist of the "Elite Squad" films (who methodically kills/tortures drug traffickers) is regarded almost always as a hero instead of an aspect of the police to be criticized.

Particularly in the elections that happened last year, proposals to "end impunity" (as lowering the age for being treated as an adult in court) have had largely more electoral effect and have been widely more propagated than projects for improving rehabilitation capability or respecting human rights in prisons. In fact, it's common to hear the maxim "Human rights for right people [and not for criminals]" around here to disqualify proposals of the latter.

Thanks to this public opinion trend, stories like those in the article about people who are able to "get out" instead of being arrested or killed are largely ignored. (Seeing them on Hacker News is easier than on the daily newspaper or even than on left-wing blogs which hardly have journalism potential to get a story like this.) It's nice to see them.

The same way capitalist concentration made building a small business very hard by the start of the 20th Century, the same process is taking place right now with the Internet. We usually don't notice or even like it (why, isn't it great to have every service in the same place?), but it is a tendency. Many arguments in favor of the small business and the virtues of free competition that were used back then are being used now by this post. The post even acknowledges that "the world isn't flat", but presumes the Internet needs to be, as if it was isolated from the rest of the system.

Even if net neutrality were approved, I don't think that unless there are other technological revolutions that open new sectors up like the PC or the Internet were, that subdivisions of large companies will be responsible for most new stuff, taking the most of the market for itself anyway and making competition harder, as we can see today in many ways. It'd just be a (very positive) way to preserve the current state of things a while longer, but not something capable of keeping the Internet "flat" in the long term.

As much as people who log into their website through a browser do.

Their app's feature set consists of contact information, maps to the school, a gallery of static photos about the school, and webviews that display their website's content directly. It doesn't even comprise grades, memos and so on, which is what my product's focus is. That's why I don't think that's the reason.

Educacional is their provider for some online content (mainly games and similar stuff for young kids to have IT lessons). The grades db, memos and so on are managed by the school itself, and the news as well. Educacional, as far as my app is concerned, is simply a gateway for getting authentication tokens to /those/ services which I actually use.

And, the app that I mentioned in the article (which could be considered as a competitor of sorts) is also being developed by the school itself.

First of all, don't trick yourself: HTML is not a programming language, it's a markup language parsed by your web browser which then turns that markup into cool websites.

Then, wanting to code "the fastest way" is a wrong concept. Learn everything you can, doesn't matter how long it takes, learn right.

There are basic tutorials on programming languages online which are good for starting up, and then there are thousands of books and documentation which might help you around. Specifically, for iPhone development you need to know the Objective-C programming language, so here's a tip: Don't head into coding a huge app hoping you'll just learn by making it, while you just end up copying code from StackOverflow entries. Learn, and then use what you learned inside an app.

IRC is a great way to talk to experienced developers, and browsing source code is also great for learning new coding techniques. If you need any more help, I'm always reachable.

(Also, as a wise man said, "Age is just a number". Just because you're very young, it doesn't mean you can't do stuff better than a 30 year old might. All it takes is effort.)